Cornhusker Clapback, Taking the ESPN Bait

I didn’t want to have to write about ESPN.

I’m not even a minuscule, Covid-droplet sized blip on The World Wide Leader’s Galactic radar, and they seem to register less and less on my own daily sports watch-list with every episode of Get Up swinging and missing like it’s a hammered drunk beer leaguer in the bottom of the ninth.

So, I waited. That’s why this post is so late arriving. But, stuff. Just. Kept. Getting. Said.

Besides, there are significantly bigger fish to fry; some Shark Week-sized, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat”-ass fish that are in need of some hot grease, some beer batter and a shitload of lemon zest.

There are people that are dead. A lot of fucking people. And there are kids being told to go back to school, and teachers who are now expected to be janitors/nurses/counselors/epidemiologists/de facto members of the CDC/rabbipriestshamans.

We’ve got the MyPillow guy claiming that he’s our only hope of curing this damn dirty virus and the US Postal Service appears to be getting fully ratfucked apart until all we’re going to have left is Kevin Costner in this doofy outfit bringing our Amazon packages from Overlord Bezos.

So I probably shouldn’t waste the blog post. So, I waited. That’s why this post is so late arriving. But, stuff. Just. Kept. Getting. Said.

I probably shouldn’t even spare more than a few Times New Roman thoughts on a network that is hemorrhaging cash like Mike Greenberg is a subdermal hematoma and is desperately hoping that they can drop an IOU off over at the Disney+ offices so they can keep inexplicably making it rain on Dick Vitale.

But, Scott Frost went to a podium and said some shit.

And you could argue that this was a silly statement. Or a little cocky. Or maybe that it was seemingly ignorant to those aforementioned fish and that Memorial Stadium-sized fryer.

But it was honest.

And, what you couldn’t argue — what you haven’t been able to argue since Dana X. Bible and Biff Jones were in charge and the Nebraska Bugeaters were playing the local YMCA team in leather helmets — is the inalienable fact that Husker fans will care significantly too much about this team and this program.

It’s what we do, you see.

We don’t just give a shit. We give multiple shits.

We give Jurassic Park meme-sized shits about our college football team and, for the past 25-odd years, we desperately hope that this steaming pile of poop-emoji doesn’t resemble the product that we get on the field.

(*Author’s note: lately, we’ve been out of luck.)

Then, Mike Wilbon interrupted, asking for a pardon.

To be clear: I like Wilbon and Pardon the Interruption is fine.

It’s Miller Lite. It gets the job done, and is palatable as long as I’m not paying too much for it.

And, I’m fine with him also caring a little too much.

Plus, what the hell else is he going to talk about right now? He’s paid to get fired up over small-ish junk, because all the big-ish junk isn’t happening anywhere but Orlando and he probably already had a segment devoted to that, sandwiched in between other 3-minute segments and commercials about how much ass Frank Thomas is getting, now that he’s rebooted his low testosterone.

Then, Desmond Howard took a break from his usual role on air — breathlessly giggling at every comment his co-hosts make like he’s a tweenage boy 2-Mountain Dew Baja Blasts deep, who just heard a wet fart at a slumber party — to bring what he undoubtedly thought was the heat.

Oh, man. Did you hear that, Milquetoast Greenberg? He said the…A-word!?!?

So, ESPN continued to tag Nebraska in these videos.

Because: it doesn’t take a SEO galaxy brain to know that if you bait a hook with Nebraska’s name on it and let even a lukewarm, crustless-bread-dipped-in-room-temp-skim-milk analyst like Desmond Howard toss it over the edge of your yacht: Nebraskans will take the bait. We always take the bait.

Hell, I’m taking it right now.

But Nebraska, long rumored to be a place that holds onto a grudge longer than even its glory days (*Author’s note: which is saying something), isn’t the one dragging out its interaction with the entertainment and sports programming networking.

So, we find ourselves here.

Nearly a week and a day after all alleged hell was unleashed by a quick statement from a guy who speaks plainly and we discovered that hell hath no fury like a Giggler scorned and a tourniquet-needing network struggling to fill time.

But what Wilbon and Howard and the social media squad at ESPN failed to realize, what virtually everyone who isn’t from inside this tribal, subway-train-car close 1.8 million is that the fans of Nebraska are more self-aware than we’re given credit for.

Yes, we heinously overreact.

If you drop our names — in between hyperventilating with hyena-laughter at a lame Rece Davis pun, like you just hotboxed the stickiest of the icky on your way over to the studio, and making regrettable statements of your own — than we’re going to take note. Not because there’s nothing to do but tip cows in farmer Hezekiah’s barnyard and we all live in manure-constructed lean-tos with barely-running water, but because we’re so loyal that it’s almost a little bit scary to outsiders.

And, if you think that you’re going to devour the emaciated carcass of the once-proud Nebraska football program with a microwave oven take, while you’re seated firmly aboard the RMS Titanic that is ESPN in 2020? You’ve got to know something:

We’ve already brought our own neurotic flamethrower takes and have been devouring that failure with sado-masichistic gusto for years like we’re the fucking Donner Party.

Nothing you can say hurts more than witnessing the improbable, impossible rise to unparalleled glory, which occurred slightly more recently than anyone outisde of our cannon-shaped state would care to admit, and then the ensuing stumblefuck of a crash-landing into the 2000s that has happened since.

A once seemingly unbeatable juggernaut, failing to adapt to the times, making some bad hires and spending a ton of money in ineffectual ways while still trying desperately to cling to their past success?

This story should be all too familiar to ESPN.

It’s what they would see if they looked in the mirror.